Mayan prediction for end of world isn't funny anymore

This Dec. 14, 2012, photo shows a detail of a replica of the Sixth Monument, which mentions the 13th Baktun, the end of a major 5,125-year cycle in the Mayan Long Count calendar, on display at the Mayan Museum in Cancun. Amid a worldwide frenzy of advertisers and new-agers preparing for a Maya apocalypse, one group is approaching Dec. 21 with calm and equanimity calm — the people whose ancestors supposedly made the prediction in the first place. Mexico’s 800,000 Mayas are not the sinister, secretive, apocalypse-obsessed race they’ve been made out to be. (AP Photo/Israel Leal)

Today the Mayan calendar comes to an end, and with it, many have believed, comes the Apocalypse.

Few have taken the prediction seriously, but it has nonetheless spawned a fair amount of speculation and banter on social media.

A week ago, however, we were overwhelmed by a tragedy of less scope but of a far more immediate reality.

The world ended last Friday for 20 children and six women massacred in a small town in Connecticut.

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What followed, like what many have predicted in the Mayan legend, was a different kind of beginning. For the people of Newtown, Conn., it’s the start along a path raw with emotion and mired in tears.

Lives moving forward with holes in the hearts of so many families makes the Mayan prediction seem a little silly. Predictions of tragedy are nothing in the face of the real thing.

The prediction for today was not a first.

The last well-publicized “end of the world” prediction came from a religious leader named Harold Camping, who predicted “Judgement Day” would arrive on May 21, 2011. It didn’t.

After apologizing to his followers for being wrong, Camping said he had his dates wrong. The actual end of the world would occur on Oct. 21, 2011. It didn’t.

Today has been predicted to be the new end of days.

According to Associated Press writer Jack Chang:

“The Maya didn’t say much about what would happen next, after a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count comes to an end. So into that void have rushed occult writers, bloggers and New Age visionaries foreseeing all manner of monumental change, from doomsday to a new age of enlightenment.”

Chang introduces us to Lu Zhenghai and Yang Zongfu, two Chinese men who believe a giant flood — or worse — is coming. Zhenghai spent his life savings of $160,000 building a 70-foot-by-50-foot ark. Zongfu constructed a three-ton yellow steel ball 13 meters in diameter that is built to survive earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis.

Chang reports that Jose Manrique Esquivel, “a descendent of the Maya, said his community in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula sees the date as a celebration of their survival despite centuries of genocide and oppression. He blamed profiteers looking to scam the gullible for stoking doomsday fears.”

Escquivel sees Dec. 21 as the end of a great era, and the beginning of an even better one.

In recent weeks, talk of the end of the world has prompted bar specials, shopping bargains and lighthearted surveys on social media. (“How would you want to spend the last 10 days before the world ends?”)

The Sandy Hook School shooting has made it all seem not so lighthearted.

We’re pretty certain the lights aren’t going to go out across the universe today. But for the families and loved ones of 26 Newtown, Conn., families, a light has already gone out of their lives.

Someone’s world ends every day. Last Friday gave that sad truth a stark reality.